HomeCricketIndia5 batsmen who impressed the most during Vijay Hazare Trophy 2018

5 batsmen who impressed the most during Vijay Hazare Trophy 2018

February 26, 2018

Image Credit - Zee News

The Vijay Hazare Trophy is a 50-overs List A tournament which is organised and conducted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) every year. The 2017/18 edition of the tournament is being contested by 28 domestic cricket teams in the country and has now entered the knockout stages. Here, we list down five batsmen who have come out as the most impressive in Vijay Hazare Trophy 2017/18, scoring tons of runs.

The stakes in India’s premier 50-overs competition are pretty high and it is often seen by the domestic and fringe players as a stage to excel and impress the national selectors. The story has not been any different this year and we have seen plenty of extraordinary batting performances in the ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy.

5 batsmen who have impressed the most in Vijay Hazare Trophy 2017/18:

1. Mayank Agarwal (Karnataka)

Having scored a whopping 633 runs in his outings for Karnataka, Mayank Agarwal has been the standout batsman in the Vijay Hazare Trophy this season. Not just in the premier 50-over domestic tournament, Mayank has churned out sensational numbers throughout the course of this domestic season, which the national selectors would struggle to overlook when the sit down to pick the squad for the T20 tri-series involving Sri Lanka and Bangladesh next month.

Mayank’s three centuries have been instrumental in Karnataka’s run to the final of the Vijay Hazare Trophy this campaign and the 27-year-old will be aiming to finish the season off with a piece of silverware in his cabinet this term.

2. Siddhesh Lad (Mumbai)

Siddhesh Lad is the only other batsman to have registered three hundreds in the ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy and has been in prolific run-scoring form for Mumbai right throughout the 2017/18 domestic season. The 25-year-old right-hander has established himself as a reliable top-order batsman for a star-studded Mumbai team by scoring consistently in the Ranji Trophy, Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and Vijay Hazare Trophy this season.

Batting at the crucial Number 3 slot, Lad has scored 373 runs in his outings in the domestic 50-over competition and has emerged as the second highest run-getter in the tournament this season. With Mumbai failing to qualify for the semi-finals, Lad’s next outing will be for the Mumbai Indians in the IPL in April.

3. Rajat Patidar (Madhya Pradesh)

The unheralded Rajat Patidar’s tally of 369 runs in 6 innings puts him third on the list of the top run-scorers in the current Vijay Hazare Trophy season. The Madhya Pradesh-opener scored his runs at a healthy average of 73.80 and a strike rate of 125.51, highest among any other batsman on this illustrious list. While his team failed to qualify for the knockout rounds of the tournament, Patidar’s batting at the top of the order was crucial in Madhya Pradesh’s three wins in the group stages.

While he was not a part of the IPL auction, Patidar will fancy his chances of making the Rest of India squad to face Ranji champions Vidarbha in the upcoming Irani Trophy match.

4. Suryakumar Yadav (Mumbai)

Suryakumar Yadav is another player who has been on the fringes of a national call-up for quite a while now and the 27-year-old Mumbai batsman has done his chances no harm by emerging as one of the leading scorers in the Vijay Hazare Trophy this season. With India looking to zero in on a reliable middle-order batsman ahead of the ODI World Cup in England next year, Suryakumar must be itching to get an opportunity to prove himself on the international stage in the near future.

One of the pillars of the Kolkata Knight Riders’ middle-order in the last four years, Suryakumar will turn out for his home franchise Mumbai Indians in the upcoming edition of the IPL and hope to continue his exploits in the world’s premier domestic T20 league.

5. Kona Srikar Bharat (Andhra Pradesh)

The little-know KS Bharat completes our list of most impressive batsmen in the Vijay Hazare Trophy 2018. The Andhra Pradesh-opener has been one of the finds of the BCCI’s domestic 50-overs competition and it won’t be wrong to say that Bharat’s quickfire starts have been one of the key reasons behind Andhra making it to their first ever Vijay Hazare Trophy semi-finals and being just a step away from playing the big final.

The 24-year-old wicketkeeper batsman has scored 361 runs in 6 matches in the tournament at an average of over 60. Bharat will have to be at the very top of his game if Andhra are to clinch their first ever Vijay Hazare title this season.